In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. As Scott explains here, the column is now biweekly, alternating with The Alternative Number Ones on Mondays. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.
In most of the world, your 28th birthday is not a very big deal. I don’t have any idea what I did on my 28th birthday. Got drunk, probably. But when you’re a boy-band superstar from South Korea, your 28th birthday is a momentous occasion. It’s your group’s expiration date, your Logan’s Run moment. It’s the day that you’re legally obligated to begin your military service, a period of about 21 months that every able-bodied man in South Korea is required to serve. Any other K-pop boy band would’ve had to go on hiatus in that moment. But when that moment arrived for BTS, the rules changed.
The day before the BTS song “Life Goes On” became the first Korean-language single ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, the group’s oldest member — Kim Seok-jin, known professionally as just plain Jin — celebrated his 28th birthday. When the nascent K-pop entertainment company BigHit assembled BTS, one of their scouts literally recruited Jin off the street just because he was good-looking — a new-world version of the old Hollywood origin-story myth where, say, Lana Turner could be discovered at a soda fountain. Jin was never the most visible member of BTS, but the group couldn’t just lose one guy and keep going, especially with that compulsory military service hanging over all the others. But just a few days before Jin’s 28th birthday, South Korea’s Parliament voted to change the Military Service Act. Under the new rules, a “pop-culture artist” who “greatly increased the image of Korea both within Korea and throughout the world” could hold off on enlistment until the age of 30.
It’s not a coincidence that South Korea changed the rules just before BTS would’ve had to take a long break. That amendment was widely known as the BTS Law. The South Korean government changed things specifically because BTS were the nation’s biggest cultural export at the time. Their continued success was arguably more important to South Korea than Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which won Best Picture at the Oscars that very same year. The members of BTS still had to do their military service, and a prolonged hiatus was still waiting for them.
By now, they’ve all done it. As I write this, all seven BTS members have finished their service, and the group is back together, working on new music. But I don’t know of any boy bands who have been able to stay on top after taking that government-mandated break. South Korea knew that it had a good thing going, and the government didn’t want to interrupt the global BTS winning streak. BTS had become a geopolitical asset, and the law just had to change.
As a passive American observer, it was a bit baffling to watch all this happen. The whole idea of compulsory military service hasn’t been a reality for American men during my lifetime, and I am pretty old. The idea that all these guys have to go enlist is wild, and it’s even wilder that the country would alter its national laws so that a big-deal boy band could operate uninterrupted for a little while longer. BTS come from a very different part of the world, and they’re beholden to different rules. In a way, the brief but historic chart success of “Life Goes On” is an explanation of why the BTS Law was passed in the first place. At the exact moment that the law went into effect, BTS were able to turn an almost entirely Korean-language song into a #1 American hit. Nobody had ever done that before. Nobody has really done it since, either — not even BTS themselves.
It should’ve been “Gangnam Style.” Eight years before “Life Goes On,” the Seoul artist PSY went turbo mega-viral with a profoundly goofy dance-rap novelty that became a global phenomenon. “Gangnam Style” was huge over here. It had real-deal cultural impact, and it was a pretty fun song on its own merits, whether or not you understood its implicit criticism of a materialistic society. But because Billboard hadn’t yet started using YouTube views when putting together the Hot 100, that song couldn’t get past #2. (It’s an 8.) As a result, the first actual Korean-language #1 hit is a boring up-with-people COVID single, a message song with no actual message. “Life Goes On” is really just one more chart stat for BTS, a group that’s already got plenty of those. The song didn’t have any staying power, and its real impact was mostly statistical. They changed the law for this.
In some ways, “Life Goes On” was the realization of a great promise. Early in their career, BTS claimed that they didn’t want to sing in English, that operating within the Korean language was part of their core identity. That didn’t stop them from becoming hugely popular in the US, and they racked up a handful of top-10 hits before COVID changed their plans. “Dynamite,” the group’s first-ever English-language song, was supposedly what BTS and their handlers felt like they had to do after canceling a global tour. It worked. They finally conquered the Hot 100, but they did it with a naked pander-move that was clearly calculated to appeal to the largest-possible swath of the English-speaking world. They won, but the victory wasn’t on their own terms.
A month later, a few BTS members jumped on a remix of Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat).” They even had some Korean lyrics on that one. When the word “BTS” got attached to that song, it went to #1, too. So BTS had two #1 hits over here, but they were both calculated and vaguely nonsensical. Those hits had nothing to do with the melodically florid, emotionally bittersweet songs that turned the group into a planet-wide phenomenon in the first place. But “Life Goes On” is more or less a real BTS song, an example of the kind of music that the group came up making. It’s not a particularly interesting song. But outside of the boundary-shattering nature of their commercial success, BTS aren’t a particularly interesting group. By making a boring ballad, they at least accurately represented themselves.
In a Genius video, BTS member Jimin says, “The concept of ‘Life Goes On’ began from asking ourselves, ‘What stories can we uniquely tell?’ We embodied our honest emotions when faced with a different reality, our disrupted daily routines.” I hate that shit! Pop stars aren’t supposed to talk like they’re giving corporate seminars! But things are different in South Korea, where even the tiniest controversy can derail a promising career and where singers go through relentless media training long before they get any real public attention. (That strategy seems to have worked for Jimin, who will eventually appear in this column as a solo artist.)
Don’t watch that Genius explainer video that I just mentioned. I’m serious. Stay away. It’s not just boring; it’s actively depressing. We expect certain things from pop stars. They exist as avatars of flash and verve and spontaneity. BTS can bring that kind of charm. I’ve seen them do it. In that video, though, they all have to stay on message, to repeat the blankly positive platitudes of the song’s lyrics, and it feels like we’re seeing hostages reading the cue cards held up by their off-camera kidnappers. I would love to believe in the magic of BTS, but I find artifacts like this to be actively repellent. It’s like: BTS are never more meaningless than when they’re trying to be meaningful.
The sentiment behind “Life Goes On” is real enough. It’s supposed to be a statement of solidarity. BTS couldn’t see their fans, and their fans couldn’t see them. Everyone was stuck at home, waiting for a seemingly endless historic moment to be over. But even though it felt like our lives were frozen, the world just kept going. With the song, BTS claimed that they were trying to reach out and comfort the world. I didn’t feel very comforted, though. It didn’t work on me.
The song’s opening lines — “One day, the world stopped without any warning/ Spring didn’t know to wait, showed up not even a minute late” — at least start to capture the shittiness of everything shutting down just as winter ended in the Northern hemisphere. But that’s not a story that BTS could uniquely tell, is it? It’s vague and universal to the point of being almost meaningless. I’m using the English translation of the “Life Goes On” lyrics to write this column, but even without looking at that translation, I could predict that the BTS response to that situation was to spout bland slogans. You can tell that the lyrics are going to be ephemeral and non-specific because that’s how the music is.
Musically, “Life Goes On” belongs to no particular genre. The production is all stuff that’s been shown to signify broad sincerity — acoustic guitars, wobbly high-pitched vocal samples, unobtrusively rap-inspired drum programming. The vocals, both sung and rapped, are muted and downcast. The hooks barely exist. Even if you don’t speak the language, this is music that’s supposed to pat you on the shoulder and let you know that things are going to be OK. I guess that resonated for a lot of people, but I never got to the point where I could actually feel the things that I was supposed to feel. I like it when pop music manipulates my emotions. I want it to do that. I’m a willing mark for that shit. But with a song like “Life Goes On,” I only hear the codes at work, the mechanisms that are supposed to generate feelings. There’s something alienating about this kind of performed sincerity. At least for me, it never crosses over into actual sentiment, let alone emotion.
On a surface level, there’s stuff to like about “Life Goes On.” It’s pretty enough. It’s got sleek overlapping harmonies, and Jimin in particular hits some serious falsetto notes. The singing and rapping are interwoven in ways that don’t feel all that forced. There’s some decent lilt to the chorus, and I always think it’s cool how K-pop groups interweave a few English phases, flitting back and forth between languages in ways that I just can’t do. I hear absolutely nothing offensive in the track. It breezes past me frictionlessly. But that’s a problem, too. It leaves absolutely no impression.
I’m missing something. I know I’m missing something. Some of that is probably cultural. The people who truly believe in BTS look at them as a force for forging connections, a catalyst for community. Amidst all the other K-pop idols making flashy, exuberant pop music, BTS are the ones who stand out because they’re the ones who strive for meaning. I just can’t detect that meaning myself. It’s not just a language thing, either. People all over the world love BTS, and plenty of them don’t speak Korean. There’s just some ineffable thing that I cannot hear. If anything, I miss the stylistic exuberance of the group’s K-pop peers. This ostensibly meaningful gloop leaves me completely cold. Give me the candy-coated trash instead.
I can’t find too many anecdotes about the making of “Life Goes On,” which isn’t that surprising for a song that didn’t stick around enough to merit the oral-history treatment. Three BTS members have songwriting credits on the track: J-Hope, Suga, and RM. So does the song’s producer, regular BTS collaborator Pdogg. Some Westerners were involved, too. One of the song’s co-writers is industry veteran Antonina Armato, who appeared in this column a long time ago for co-writing Glenn Medeiros and Bobby Brown’s 1990 chart-topper “She Ain’t Worth It.” I can’t think of anyone else who went 30 years in between writing #1 hits, at least outside of sample credits. German-American YouTube singer Chris James, German pop artist Ruuth, and German-Polish songwriter BLVSH also have credits. What did they do? And does it matter? I don’t think it matters. Songs like “Life Goes On” have lots of people in the credits because making this kind of pop record is work. It sounds like work, too.
“Life Goes On” existed to express longing and to serve as a vehicle for that longing. It’s about living in a dark moment and waiting for that moment to be over. I got it then, and I get it now. But because of the track’s topical qualities, I have a hard time revisiting “Life Goes On,” and that goes beyond me just not liking the song very much. Today, “Life Goes On” feels like the opposite of escape. Instead, I feel like I’m being dragged back to a moment that I would much rather forget.
In an interview that he gave right before the track came out, BTS member RM seemed a little dubious about “Life Goes On”: “There’s lyrics, like ‘like an echo in the forest’ and ‘like an arrow in the blue sky.’ The song kind of feels like that. It could just float off and disappear. It might even come off as bland next to ‘Dynamite.'” Well, yeah. That’s a problem, especially if you already think “Dynamite” is pretty bland. In that interview, RM talks about how BTS tried to counterbalance that blandness by getting a bit more energetic on the other songs from Be, their second album of 2020. But Be feels slapped-together and deeply inessential. It almost plays like an old-school pop album. You’ve got two big hits, “Dynamite” and “Life Goes On,” and you’ve got to string together some filler so that the hits can be packaged in album form. I wish I could hear the other tracks on Be as anything other than filler. I cannot.
“Life Goes On” came out on the same day as the Be album, and BTS worked hard to sell it. Group member Jung Kook, who will eventually appear in this column as a solo artist, directed the “Life Goes On” video. That clip is mostly BTS sitting around their shared apartment or ambling through deserted Seoul city streets, dreaming of better times. Near the end, there’s what almost qualifies as a dream sequence. V, another BTS member, stares off at Seoul Olympic Stadium, as if he’s imagining a moment when the group will be back in front of their fans. And then they really are performing in that stadium, except that their fans aren’t in there with them.
BTS got pretty used to performing for cameras, without anyone else there. Shortly before releasing Be, they did a pay-per-view livestream show at Seoul’s KSPO Dome. They also taped remote “Life Goes On” performances for a bunch of American TV outlets —the American Music Awards, Good Morning America, James Corden. They needed to do all that because “Life Goes On” wasn’t going to get radio play over here. The single didn’t sell or stream as well as “Dynamite,” either. But “Life Goes On” arrived during a slow week, and the extremely online BTS Army pushed hard to earn it a #1 debut, interrupting the long reign of 24kGoldn and Iann Dior’s “Mood.”
The success didn’t last long. In its second week, “Life Goes On” plummeted all the way to #33 — at that point, the second-biggest fall-off in history after 6ix9ine and Nicki Minaj’s “Trollz.” But this wasn’t a BTS problem. We were in the moment of the ephemeral disappearing hit song. The next Number Ones column will look at a song that fell off even harder in its second week. Honestly, I’m a little more impressed by what BTS did with their next Hot 100 hit. In 2021, the group reached #81 with “Film Out,” a track recorded specifically for a Japanese-language compilation. I think it’s fucking amazing that a K-pop group’s song for the Japanese market — a pander-move directed at a completely different culture — had enough juice to chart at all over here. That’s real power.
“Life Goes On” felt like a big deal at the time just because it was a Korean-language song that reached #1 in America. Five years later, that feels like less of a story, partly because the song itself is such a minor blip in the grand BTS arc. The Be album went platinum in the US, but “Life Goes On” only went gold, and even that took about a year. For a #1 hit, those numbers are not impressive. BTS had bigger hits on deck. They’ll be in this column again before long. The next time we see them, they’ll be singing in English again.
GRADE: 3/10
BONUS BEATS: I have nothing for you here. Not one thing. What, you think anyone is trying to cover “Life Goes On,” or sample it, or put it in a movie? No. Nobody is doing that. Even if “Life Goes On” were in English, it would just float past. So here’s something else that BTS did around the same time. In 2021, they taped an episode of MTV Unplugged, and they covered former Number Ones artists Coldplay’s 2005 single “Fix You.” In the process, BTS might’ve foreshadowed another song that’ll eventually appear in this column. Here they are, singing “Fix You”:
(“Fix You” peaked at #59. Good song.)
The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal The History Of Pop Music is out now via Hachette Books. 여기서 책을 구매하세요.
